Trial by Jury in Criminology

Running head: CRIMINOLOGY
CRIMINOLOGY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

CRIMINOLOGY1
Trial by Jury
A jury can be defined as a body of people sworn to be rendering verdicts in an impartial
way and officially submitting them by way of court or for setting of penalty or judgment. Trial
by jury can be described as the proceeding in a court where a jury is seen as to be making
decisions or finding facts (Brooks, 2017). A jury trial can be differentiated by a judge only trial
or a bench trial in the fact that in a bench trial a judge is the only person having the adjudication
to be making any decision regarding a case. In the modern times the juries are found to be
ascertaining in the court whether there is a guilt or lack of guilt in a crime.
In Australia trial by jury can be seen as an integral part of the judicial system. In the
modern times juries in Australia are seen to be entrenched in a formal way by the Constitution of
Australia for the offences that are heard at a federal level. In the modern times the trial by juries
are seen as to be used in the criminal offences that are most serious in nature. The Jury system in
Australia can even be seen as being the default form of the trial of any serious crime under the
provision of the State law (Freckelton, 2016).
Although the jury system can be used for both criminal and civil trials, however in
Australian judicial system the jury trial is rarely used in civil cases. In the criminal cases also the
jury trial is observed to be diminishing. An important reason for this can be because of the strong
incentives present for the accused to be foregoing their rights to the jury trials because of the
discount in sentencing of an accused person who pleads guilty before the trial.

CRIMINOLOGY2
In the Victorian Justice system the role of the jury trial in criminal and civil cases can be
seen to be the determination of the facts and the application of the laws to the facts that had been
given by the judges for reaching to a specific verdict. In a Victorian Judicial system the division
of the functions that can be regarded as fundamental to the system of trial by jury in the
following way: decision of the fact are made by the jury and the decisions of the law by the
Judges. In the criminal trials the judges are required to be giving general directions to separate
the functions of the judge and the juries. Without this direction by the judge thee direction
summed up by the judge would be seen as inadequate and the trial would be miscarried. An
example of the direction by the judge can be seen in the case R v Ali Ali (1981).
In the constitutional principle the importance of the trial by jury for administering the
justice can be found in relation to the fact that any person should not be imprisoned for any
serious crime unless had been decided by their peers as guilty. Over the years there had been
approval of the system of the jury trial in both civil and criminal cases by many critics. The trial
by jury system can be seen as a means of ensuring of impartial trial to person by their peers and
giving the ‘qualities and characters of a judge’ to the people (Gans, and Palmer, 2013). The
phrase ‘trial by one’s peers’ is seen to be requiring the juries to be representing the community as
a whole, however the phrase can be seen as to be ambiguous. In one hand, the selection of
representative can be seen as just a reflection or reproduction of some larger entity in a smaller
scale. Yet on the other hand, the representative can be seen as taking the duty for himself or
herself for the protection or support of the interests of the group he or she is considered to be
representing.